If you are in the market for a brand new mobile phone, you have a couple of options available to you. You can obviously buy a post paid plan that includes a new mobile phone and a monthly plan, you can buy a prepaid mobile phone (and prepaid sim card) or you can buy a mobile phone outright. What are the differences?
As I discovered the other day whilst looking to upgrade my wife’s mobile phone, when you walk into an Optus or any other carrier’s store and tell the assistant that you are after a new mobile phone without a plan, they will show you a selection of competitively priced prepaid mobile phones. Eg Nokia 6300 priced at $159. I was tempted.
I then advised the guy that my wife already has a prepaid mobile plan with Savvytel, and he told me the price to buy it outright was about $250 (I can’t recall exactly).
So I asked him what I needed to do to unlock it. He said I need to buy it for $159, purchase a recharge of atleast $80, and then request that Optus unlock it. That is pretty much how we get to the $250 price. The phone wasn’t worth $250 to me.
Now if I was already with Optus, or was interested in an Optus prepaid plan, it would have been all systems go.
The alternative is to find the phone via another store and buy it outright, ie with no connection to a carrier. This would enable me to use my Savvytel sim card without incurring any other fees.
So where can you find unlocked phones? Ebay is one place with lots of unlocked phones. You just need to be careful that the phone can work in Australia and comes with some warranty. Prices are usually pretty reasonable at Ebay. Another alternative is to buy from someone like Techoni , who sell phones outright. They have a great range with great prices. Compare for yourself.
So there you have it. If you are in the market for a new phone, either buy another prepaid phone from your existing carrier and most majors sell them eg Optus, Virgin, Vodafone, Telstra (and Savvytel as I discovered), buy the phone outright from someone like Techoni or Ebay, or if you are also looking to change prepaid mobile plans, buy it from them with your prepaid sim card.
